Why?

You earned it; you deserve it.

The bathroom was chock full of cockroaches. I saw no reason to mention that to Andrew, who has a phobia about those prehistoric critters. After all, we weren’t dining in the bathroom. (But the cockroaches certainly were!) I’d rather eat in a restaurant full of cockroaches than one full of insecticides and other poisons.

“Fair fa’ your honest, sonsie face,
Great Chieftan o’ the Puddin-race!”

That’s followed by the presentation of the haggis, a boiled sheep’s stomach stuffed with the beast’s entrails, suet, and oatmeal. Then, as a British Broadcasting Company recipe suggests, “Eat and then belch loudly or throw up.” Finally, wash the whole feast down with more than a little whisky.

What could go wrong? That’s a rhetorical question; I know the answer.

I’ve been telling everyone that tomorrow is Burns Night. When I called Walter this afternoon, he told me that I was off by a day: it’s tonight. For the second rhetorical question, how could I have been so stupid?

There was no time to track down a haggis, so I employed a burrito instead. A burrito’s pretty much like a proper haggis, except edible. I finished off my Burns Night repast with a large glass of Islay whisky, a peaty, malty delight appropriate with—or without—any meal.

For today’s Chinese New Year feast, I fried the haggis with onions, garlic, bok choy, peppers, salmon, and black bean sauce. After all the ingredients were seared to golden goodness, I threw the horrid haggis in the compost then enjoyed my first dinner of 4707.

In practice, defective orthography simply means that there’s no consistent correlation between a sound and a letter, e.g., grow, though, tango, et cetera. That’s the way English has always been and, most likely, the way it will always will be.

English is difficult and broken, but it still works. On the good days.

I don’t believe that I read anything by Updike except for one or two of his magazine pieces. Now that he’s deceased, it seems like a good time to repeat a line from one of his unread novels.

The great thing about the dead, they make space.

Disposable electronics and shoddy clothing comprise most of my Chinese possessions. A cheap, porcelain bowl that I bought in Chinatown—where else?—is the only thing that resembles traditional chinaware. That’s one of nine objects I photographed to make Nine Pieces of Studio China.

This is one of those days I’m glad my mother has no idea what I do in the privacy of my studio. This wouldn’t appall her, but it might lead to a request to photograph her collection of china, which is much more extensive than mine. And more difficult to light.